Printing with XT

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Me and my buddy have had our ultimaker working for a week now, and it's really hard to quit printing with it because there are tons of things we want to do with it!

The problem we have now is with the green transparent xt filament we are testing. It starts out fine, then it shoots out too much material on the surface which seems to "crack". We are printing straight on non-heated glass.

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It looks like your bed is warped. You have a really thin area in the middle there where pressure is building up, further up in the print it looks like there's more room under the nozzle and all that built up pressure is squirting out excess plastic.

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We (3DVerkstan) are the official Colorfabb resellers in Sweden and I'd like to help you if possible.

The XT is not available in green yet, might you have the ordinary transparent green?

It sounds/looks like there might be underextrusion if you have the nozzle a little to close, but that's just a theory.

Please give me a call on +46 708 980 985 and I'll see how I can help you.

Cheers,

Daniel

Haha, funny that you replied Daniel - we were at 3DVerkstan a couple of days ago and got this sample of transparent green from you. It's a small 3d world. Thanks, we'll call you.

But it makes sense if its PLA/PHA and not XT, the temperature we set is way too high, isn't it?

It looks like your bed is warped. You have a really thin area in the middle there where pressure is building up, further up in the print it looks like there's more room under the nozzle and all that built up pressure is squirting out excess plastic.

What is your first layer height?

We have successfully printed with blue pla and Laybrick, so it would be weird if its warped.. but we'll try to level the bed again. First layer height was 0.3 mm.

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Trevox, that's funny! We had a hectic day with a lot of pickups that day...the transparent green is pure PL(L)A so it's a bit on the high side tempwise but I don't think the temp is your problem in this case.

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Robert is correct. It is very common for acrylic plate to be warped a little bit. You have a few options:

1) If you don't care how pretty the bottom layer is you can either ignore what is happening or you can just lower the bed a little.

2) You could purchase a piece of glass - have it cut smaller than the area where the 4 leveling screws are. Any glass store will do this very inexpensively. Get very thick glass if you can - something like 6mm if possible. Then clip the glass to the acrylic with paper clips. You can add blue tape or print directly on glass. When printing directly on glass the first layer should be 20C hotter than normal and then you can lower the temp after the first layer. Alternatively heat the glass a little with a hair dryer just before starting the print. You only need to heat to about 30C. Coating the glass with glue stick or hairspray also helps parts stick to glass.

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